Unwritten
by NCIS-Ninja
Summary: Jade was numb and had finally found a way to feel again. When she was with Tori, the pain ended and she felt alive. So she abused the feeling like a drug and somehow ended up here. Now the doctor can see her. Jori, One-shot. Could be triggering.


**Author's Notes: **This story is a bit twisted. Kind of dark, but not really. It came about as a simple prompt. Psychological realism. I could explain it, but it would be best if you just read it.

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Jade stared at her feet intently. It wasn't that they were interesting, just a better option that paying any attention to the shrink that was rambling across from her. He was the third shrink she's had since she was locked in this loony bin. She didn't deserve to be here at all, her dad simply reacted to an event in a much more explosive way than necessary. He didn't ask for an explanation. He didn't say he loved her. He didn't say he wanted this for her to get better. He didn't even say good bye. He just dropped her off and threw her bag at her before driving off.

So here she was, confined to a room all night, only to be let out to eat and socialize with the psycho teens that inhabited this level of hell. She never spoke to any of them though. She went straight to the table that was built for the younger kids to do art and crafts. She would sit in the corner and idly fiddle with the scissors for the hours they forced her to stay out there. She had managed to sneak some safety scissors into her room, but the sharper ones were confiscated from her before she could even try to get them into the room. Her room was a safe place. Posters of Joan Jett and various bands lined the wall and a monitored laptop with site blocks and time restrictions were on a desk. That was it. It was just a room in a hall full of rooms occupied by people that had conversations alone.

"Jade?" The shrink asked, rousing her lucidity. Jade's eyes flicked over to him, but she didn't speak a single word. She just laid there across the couch with her head propped up on one arm rest and her feet situated on the other. He was younger than her previous shrinks and couldn't be more than 25. His hair was a warm brown and was neatly combed to the side. He dressed like a business man, and acted like Dr. Phil. He told her his name at the start. It was Elmer? Wood? Doesn't matter. He undoubtedly got the job because he was so young. They thought the teens would associate with him better. Not Jade.

"Jade." He repeated in that fake sincere tone. It had to be fake. How could he possibly care about her at all, "Have you been listening?"

Jade let out a short laugh that bounced around in the sparsely decorated white room. "Of course not." She let her laugh rumbled off and rolled her eyes at the man.

"Let's go back to what you said earlier." He muttered down to his notepad as he flicked through his yellow pages of notes he had been keeping on her. "Okay. Let's try something your other doctors haven't."

"Good luck, man. You'll need it." Jade groaned, flipping her eyes back to her shoes. She sensed his tension all of a sudden. Since she had been in here, she had learned how to just sense things. How to try and feel what other people were feeling, because she couldn't feel for herself.

"Jade." He said for the third time. He was using her name to draw her attention. Jade reluctantly complied and shifted her vision towards him. "Tell me about Tori."

One word. Not a word, a name. That was all Jade needed to slip off that edge. Her eyes grew wide. It had been months since she had heard, said, and felt that name. She felt that tension string up her body like it was a rubber band poised to snap at any second. Her heart skipped a beat, then another, and another. She wouldn't be surprised if she was dead. A chilling heat washed over her, and as oxymoronic as it sounds, that was the only way to explain the sudden feeling that gripped her entire body. That name: Tori. The worst part was that Dr. Phil saw it. He now knew how to get to Jade, and that was dangerous.

So what was the way to handle the situation? Shut down. Jade shut down completely, manned the turrets, reinforced the walls surrounding her feels and buckled her emotions down. "Tori? She's a girl." Jade said softly, desperate to control her speech.

"Yes, I know that." He said matter-of-factly, giving her a smile to try and ease her. That didn't work. "Tell me about her."

Jade glanced up at the clock. It was a minute past two. That was the perfect excuse. She had a schedule to stick too and this was over at two o'clock, "Ah, I have to go. I think your next patient would be pissed or like go kill someone if you keep them waiting." Jade got up to leave, but the shrink just shook his head and motioned for her to sit down. Jade grappled with the options for a moment, but in light of her most recent macaroni rebellion, she decided it was best not to make a ruckus. She flopped back down on the couch.

"Tori was this girl I went to school with. She was a damn good singer, a damn good actress, a damn good person; she was perfect in every way." A smirk graced Jade's face. It was unintentional. She was trying to look as stern and sober as she could, but something inside of her wanted to let him know everything. Something she hadn't been able to control. The words just squirmed through the walls, and the turrets, and everything. "She was beautiful. Sexy. She was the most sensual person I knew. But she had a dirty little secret. Like we all do right? Some people are gay, killers, crazy, cheaters, or communists ... Tori wasn't any of those things. She had this little problem, and it was the same problem I had."

"Life threw all the shit it could at her. Death of family, death of friends, dad laid off, sister was in an accident, grades dropping. She was suddenly in my situation. She couldn't feel a fucking thing anymore."

_It was all numb. There was no feeling. Everything lost meaning. There was no motivation. No point. Why the hell was she here anyways? Jade West. It's a name people knew, but that meant nothing. Talent means nothing if you just have one goal. Death. Life sucks and then you die. What's the use? Why feel? Why feel? Why feel?_

Jade's thoughts intruded with her thoughts. Everything collided at once inside of her minds and her chest tightened uncontrollably. She cringed and her body went rigid as she relived that sudden rush of feeling. For just a moment she remembered what it was like to feel. Then she could only remember what it was like to want to feel. Then her body unwound as her mind drifted back to remembering what it was like to care. Then she was back to not caring at all, and finally she returned to normality.

"I'm not sure I understand." He said after a moment. Jade could tell by the looking his face that he was completely shocked at how quickly the trigger had managed to break Jade down. Three professionals and none of them until now had managed to get through to the girl.

"Then you're an idiot." Jade snapped, the rubber band of tension cracking as it was fired off and smacked into the Doc. She glared at him as he took the metaphorical blow and was taken by surprise at Jade's rash and callous behavior. Again, the words simply welled out of control, "We both were numb from the pain. When she broke down, it was in my arms. I had a heart of coal, refusing to let anyone in, but when she was bawling on the ground like a baby and her story came out, it sounded so much like mine that I grabbed her by the shoulders and decided what we would do."

Dr. Phil raised his eyebrows to encourage Jade to go on, "And that was?"

"To do everything we could to feel." Jade breathed, the word floating out of her memories like intoxicated breath thick with the scent of reminiscence. "It started with sneaking out at night. We tried little things at first, put our hands in ice, burning our fingers, making little cuts, shocking, jumping. Then-" Jade suddenly couldn't speak anymore. She saw that twelve minutes had passed and a sudden sense of urgency swept over her. She refused to speak, sealing her lips and tensing up once more.

"You can't leave until I get the full story." He informed her.

"Then I'm not leaving." She sneered back at him. They both leaned back into their seats and it became a wait-off. The seconds ticked past as Jade lolled her eyes lazily around the room, internally commenting on the terrible devote. Minutes ticked by and the room became dull and boring so her gaze shifted to the window where she watched the cars on the far off road zipping by to get to some destination of importance.

After nearly and hour, Jade broke. She had been tussling with the problem for an hour and the pressure was foreign her to boil over, "Fine." She relinquished.

Jade took a steadying breath, "It evolved. The experiments got more intense, and we were using every excuse a kid could use to spend time with each other. It started leaking into school. Skipping classes and what not. Then it all kind of bled together. Pain and pleasure were not so clear. We started doing the experiments more together than individually. We crossed that line of friendship in the name of trying to feel and for a while we were detached."

"Until it became a fucking drug. I remember our last ditch effort. I remember seeing her blood smeared against my cut and mine against her cut. I didn't even think about how dangerous it was. All the diseases and the potential problems didn't occur to me. I just-I kissed her and it dawned on me that I could feel something and it came from being with her. Love, maybe. I don't know, but whatever it was, I abused the hell out of it. We went as far as two people can and I know had I done it before with Beck when we dated, but with Tori, I felt alive. I should have stopped and listened to her, but I didn't. I ended up getting dragged into this hellhole of pleasure and abuse. And then the accident happened. The end." Jade ended abruptly her while body trembling from the story she had just told. Maybe she had thrown away the best thing she ever had. Maybe that was her curse.

"Jade." The doc said for the millionth time, "Is Tori real?"

"Of course she's fucking real." Jade snapped again, sending deadly glares across the room to him. How could he have the audacity to ask her if the center of all the best and worst moments of her life even existed?

"Okay." He said calmly, "Is she alive?"

"I-" A thought struck Jade that she hadn't considered after all this had be blocked from her brain. "I don't know. I woke up and ..."

The sheets were stained a crimson red. Tori's body was bare and bruised, like her own. She couldn't move any part of her body. She couldn't actually move at all. She could barely feel her own body. She rolled over and kissed Tori somehow in the numbness. Her lips moved and she knew Tori's eyes fluttered open and she could have sworn that she could finally feel and she could fix everything. For once, things were looking up. Then her dad came in. He was shocked, mad, purple and red. She saw Tori's eyes shut and motionless. She hadn't moved. But, Jade had just seen her move.

"You can't trust your memories." He interrupted, "They aren't true. They lied."

"How do you know?"

He put the notepad down and rested his chin in his hand. A slow smiled curved his features. "You said love. Did you love her?"

Jade stopped cold, her heart wasn't sure what to do. It couldn't decide on beating or staying still. End of the line. "I don't know."

"Yes you do." He suddenly sounded very much like herself and the whole situation became surreal, as if it shouldn't be real or actually happening. "Tell me. Did you love her?"

Everything was hot. The pressure squeezed around Jade and the room began to spin. Her mind was crunching and calculating all of the memories and events. There was so much output, but it made no sense. Just swirling thoughts caught in a vortex of indecision that was ravishing her mind. It was the worst feeling in the world until she finally snapped.

The world fell silent and her mind was quelled except for one process, and that was her heart. It had been beating this whole time and it was truly the only constant thing in her life. Maybe she just had to listen for it. It never skipped a beat, it was always working the same consistent way. She stood up without and sound and looked the man.

"I did. I loved her. She's dead, I realize that now, but I loved her with everything I had left. And I had nothing left but me."

He chuckled and shook his head, "She isn't dead, moron. You are." 

"Excuse me?" Jade asked, her voice cracking into the void of the room and echoing in her mind over and over again like a scratched record.

"You're dead, Jade."

Then Jade was falling. But forward. More like skydiving through her emotions into her own physical manifestation. She shut her eyes.

Then she opened them and saw Tori staring at her. Tori Vega's face lit up like a light bulb when she meet Jade's gaze.

"Oh my god." Tori muttered in shock to Jade, "Nurse!" Tori yelled. Everything is sharp and bright and hard and painful. It was a terrible feeling. Of being alive. She was in a hospital bed in a little white room. Tori tried to call out to the nurses again, but Jade took Tori by the cheeks and pulled her into a kiss. She knew Tori was stiff and hadn't been prepared for the sudden change in their public relationship. It was abrupt, but filled with meaning, not lust or abuse. It was just simply and perfect. Tori wasn't sure how to react. Jade had been gone for so long and suddenly here she was again. She realized then that Jade was crying.

"I loved you." Jade sobbed, "I promised I wouldn't, but I did." Jade gasped as something was yanked out of her. Nothing physical, but something mentally. She collapsed back in the bed and the nurses rushed in.

"I just thought you should know that I loved you." Jade whispered as she slipped out of consciousness again.

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**Author's Notes: **The ending, you ask? Well, that's up to you, really. I have my own idea of what happened, but I think its good to let other people have their own happy ending every once in a while.


End file.
